Fear Drive My Feet (11 page)

It covered a much greater area than my map, and we found Samandzing high in the mountains,
a considerable distance to the east. It seemed to be on a river called the Sankwep,
the most easterly tributary of the Busu. So as to plot the track, we asked Singin
to name one by one the villages passed through on the way to Samandzing, and as he
did so we sketched in the route from village to village. It was a roundabout way,
and seemed to lead across several very high mountains.

‘What are you going to do?' Les asked.

‘My orders were to join Jock, so I suppose I'd better shift on. What about you?'

‘I'm expecting the missing parts for this radio set to
be sent on by runner. If I
go too far away he might never find me. It'd be better for me to wait, and follow
in a few days when I've got the set working.'

Although it was now half past twelve I decided to set out at once, hoping to reach
Gumbum village, on the far side of Boana, by nightfall. I told Achenmeri to pack
my gear, and Buka to make ready the stores that Jock needed. Les sent Singin to the
hamlet at the foot of the hill to tell the natives to come up and carry my cargo.

It was well after one o'clock when Singin returned with nine puffing men, each armed
with either a coil of vines or a pole. I had spent the interval roughly tracing part
of the silk map on a piece of paper. The result was a crude piece of cartography with
which to guide a person across some of the roughest country in the world, but I was
only thankful that my chance meeting with Les had enabled me to have a map at all,
however rough. I had already walked to the edge of the map Bill Chaffey had given
me, and by the next day would have had only the cloudiest notion of where I was,
or where I was heading. It seemed strange that such a vital thing should have come
to me only by chance. If I had crossed the Markham higher up, if I had wasted another
day at Bob's, if Les had not gone down with fever… No doubt coincidence enters into
everyone's life: during my time in New Guinea it certainly played an important part
in mine, both for good and ill.

With Singin and Buka at their head the carriers passed through the thick bamboos
and started, slipping and swearing, down the hill. Les and I shook hands. ‘See you
in a few days,' we both said. But in fact our next meeting, an accident just like
our first, took place several years later, in a luxury hotel in Melbourne.

I followed the same course to Boana as on the previous day. The mission boy materialized
just as mysteriously as before, this time to sell me a few eggs from his hens. I
paid for them with salt, and repeated my instructions – to keep silent about our
movements and to warn Les instantly if there should be any sign of Japanese patrols.

Singin left me here, to return to his home village of Wampangan, whose grass roofs
could just be discerned through the trees on a mountainside, about half an hour's
walk away. We struck off east, across the little airstrip and into the bush. An hour's
walk found us at Karau, a village of some twelve or fourteen neat and well-made grass
houses grouped round an open space. We sat down here while the men came in from their
gardens to take over the carrying. Wild yodelling from the surrounding bush told
us that they were passing the word along. In the meantime I paid the others with
salt and let them go. They set off homeward at a trot, hoping to beat the afternoon
rain.

As soon as sufficient Karau men had come in, Buku lined them up and assigned them
their loads, and we moved off down the wide, well-graded track to Gumbum.

This village was a singularly pleasant spot. The house-kiap and the house-police were
set in a greensward surrounded by breadfruit-trees, and the paths were lined with
gay red, green, and yellow croton plants. There we spent the night, first telling
the old luluai to have sufficient carriers on the spot in the morning. The police
put up my bed, but I was still doing my own cooking, not yet having secured a satisfactory
cook-boy. The natives preferred to stay at home because of the unknown dangers and
the difficulty of the work we required them to do. I wanted a boy who would accompany
me readily, rather than one who required persuading and who would probably desert
and go home as soon as we struck hard going.

Next morning we were on the road shortly after dawn. Our route for the day lay through
Monakasat and Banzain to a village called Karangandoang. We were climbing high into
the mountains now, and the scenery was
wildly magnificent in the early part of the
day, but by three in the afternoon the hills were often blanketed in cloud, which
rose slowly from the depths of the valleys until it covered the whole countryside. The
walk between villages meant a precipitous descent into a valley and a backbreaking
climb up the other side. In the mornings the grandeur of the country was some compensation
for the effort. Later in the day, with the mist shrouding everything, it was unnerving
to walk into the valley as the unseen stream roared below, or to make what seemed
to be an endless ascent into space, for the tops of the mountains were invisible
and one could not see where the track was leading. By the time we reached Karangandoang
a misty rain was falling and the red earth of the track was very greasy and slippery.
It was cold, and the boys spread a layer of earth over part of the bamboo floor of
the house-kiap, so that, native fashion, I could have a fire in the house to cook
on, and to dry my clothes. There was no house-police, but the boys arranged accommodation
for themselves in the village, a couple of hundred yards away. The natives greeted
us with no great affection – for which, I suppose, they could hardly be blamed, because
our presence meant only the nuisance of a carry next day. However, they brought us
food, asking for salt in return.

A strong wind was blowing through the house, and I had put on dry clothes and an
extra sweater and was about to eat my meal when Buka, his eyes and teeth flashing
white against the blackness of his face, burst into the hut.

‘One of Master Jock's police-boys is coming! He says there has been trouble!' he
exclaimed.

A few seconds later a weary, muddy, but grinning policeman, his cap and loincloth
dripping wet and his bare torso steaming, appeared out of the night in the weak yellow
shaft of lantern-light. He said that his name was Buso, and that he had a message
for Les.

‘Give it to me,' I said. ‘I'll read it before it goes on to him.'

Buso fished in the depths of his haversack and produced a large sealed envelope.
I was glad to see that it had not yet been penetrated by the water, though it was
damp. I told Buso to go down to the village to eat and get dry, and to come back
in an hour.

The letter was from Ian Downs, describing how he had gone down from the mountains
to the coast near Hopoi to reconnoitre a beach on which our assault troops would
land to begin an attack on Lae. Unfriendly natives had betrayed him, and he had been
chased by a party of Japanese and nearly caught. ‘Managed to climb a ficus-tree and
watched the Nips walking round underneath. Fortunately they didn't look up,' ran
one passage. At another stage the enemy caught sight of him and opened fire, but
he managed to shake them off in the bush. He had trouble in fording the swift Bulu
River, and apparently injured himself as he crossed from side to side in an effort
to cover his tracks from the enemy. Studded through the letter, like a new kind of
punctuation mark, was the sentence, ‘Had another swig at the whisky-flask – felt
a bit better.' The whisky kept him going until, on the second day, he reached a remote
mountain village, where he was now resting.

I didn't think the Japs would let Ian get away with this. Although up to this time
they had never gone far inland, they must now realize the danger of allowing people
like Jock and Ian to continue to live freely in the mountains. A concerted drive
by the enemy to hunt such people out of hiding seemed quite a possibility.

I decided that in case there was trouble ahead it would be better to have with us
reliable police, and so, when Buso returned, his belly swollen from an enormous meal
of sweet potatoes, I told him that the letter would be taken back to Les by Achenmeri,
the recruit, and that he, Buso, would guide me to the village where Jock was staying.

The following morning, as Achenmeri turned back towards Boana, the rest of us set
out for Kasenobe. It seemed to lie well off the direct line to Samandzing, and I
asked the natives whether there was a shorter route. No, they told me, this track
was the only one. An hour later we came to a small village, where the Karangandoang
carriers handed over to a new line.

Although the sun was fairly high, we were now at such an altitude that the air was
quite cool. The country became increasingly rugged and beautiful with every mile.
On distant slopes plumes of blue smoke curled slowly up from native gardens – gardens
which in this fertile soil produced an abundance of almost all temperate-climate
crops. Here and there, like a white ribbon draped over the hillside, a mountain stream
plunged hundreds of feet into the valley, and at intervals the brilliant green of
the valley sides was broken by the red scars of landslides.

About midday we obtained our first clear view of the enormous central spine of the
Saruwaged mountain range, which runs down the middle of the Huon Peninsula. Though
about ten miles away, it was almost frightening, it seemed so high and remote. I
knew it had been crossed in one or two places, but as I looked at the jagged line
its peaks cut across the sky, it was hard to imagine anything as tiny as a human
being attempting to overcome such an obstacle. Between the soft blue of the peaks
and the sparkling blue of the sky we saw gleaming patches of white. One had the impression
that some of the mountains were snow-covered; indeed, the German explorer Detzner,
who spent four years of the First World War hiding in the interior from the Australians,
described them as snow-bearing. This curious misapprehension is explained by the
fact that on these mountains there are large areas of bare, windswept limestone which
glistens in the sun and could easily look like snow to a distant observer.

At about two o'clock, when the surrounding country had already vanished into the
fog, Kasenobe, perched on top of a cliff, appeared suddenly out of the swirling greyness.
As we clambered over the slab stockade which surrounded the settlement, we saw that
it was quite a large village for this area, consisting of over thirty houses. There
was a big church, its thick, well-thatched roof in sharp contrast to the wretched,
poky dwellings.

The feeling of remoteness became complete here. In the other villages, though I had
been conscious that many things were new or strange, somehow they seemed different
only in degree from life as I had known it in Australia. But even another planet
could have been no more unfamiliar and eerie than this savage village. If I had
to convey my main impression of it – and of the many others like it – in one word,
that word would be greyness. The fog, the stinking village pigs, the weatherbeaten
roofs, the dirty, scaly-skinned, near-naked kanakas – all these were dismal, grey,
and dispiriting, beneath a sombre, leaden sky.

Only one man spoke pidgin, and none of them had ever been away from the village to
work. There was not a shred of calico to be seen. All the men wore the traditional
dress known as mal, which is a strip of rough ‘cloth' made by beating a section of
bark from the wild mulberry until it becomes pliable. It is wound tightly round the
waist several times, and then passed between the legs to enclose the genitals. The
women wore only a flimsy petticoat, less than a foot long, made of reeds. They were
decrepit hags, in keeping with their village; their pendulous breasts reminded me
of razor-strops hanging on a barber's chair. The missionaries, in their efforts to
preserve their charges unspotted from the world, had seen to it that no minor amenity
of civilization – such as a piece of soap – penetrated to this fastness. Their church,
with its rough wooden cross, seemed a pious incongruity among stone-age sava
gery.
I thought of the Indian villages of early North American history, where mission
churches had been no barrier to acts of fiendish barbarity.

The men stood glowering as we piled the cargo in the middle of the village. Occasionally,
with angry gestures, one would jabber unintelligibly in the local dialect. I noticed
that several of the kanakas were armed with bows and arrows.

‘They are wild men here,' Buso remarked – a trifle superfluously, I felt – as he
and Buka unslung their rifles. ‘Master Jock taught them a lesson, though, when we
passed through, so I don't think they will attack us.'

Buka grinned in agreement. ‘Master Jock 'e strong-fella man too much! Kanaka all
'e no can humbug long Master Jock,' he said happily.

They pointed out the man who spoke pidgin, and I called him over. He came slowly,
sulkily, and stood in front of us with his head bowed. I told him quietly that I
wanted sufficient food for the police and myself, but he continued to stare at the
ground, and would not answer. I suppressed my anger with some effort, and explained
to him patiently that we were hungry and must eat. They had plenty of food, and if
they brought it to me they would be paid for it. If we had to help ourselves we would
take it for nothing. They could please themselves.

He translated this into ‘talk-place', and the other men discussed the ultimatum.
In the end they shouted to their women, and a few minutes later we were supplied
with potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbages, and beans. The women were as timid as the
men were aggressive, advancing just near enough to seize the proffered salt at arm's
length, and then dashing back hastily, as though afraid I would bite them. A crowd
of ten-year-old brats had gathered behind me, but they rushed away to hide whenever
I turned, however quietly, in their direction.